1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as a printer, a copying machine, a facsimile, or a multifunction machine thereof. More specifically, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that is capable of performing control of a plurality of fans for cooling the inside of a main body case.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional image forming apparatus such as a laser printer or a copying machine, printing is performed by charging a photosensitive member, subjecting a surface of the photosensitive member to exposure with light from a laser, an LED, and the like to form an electrostatic latent image thereon, developing the electrostatic latent image using a developer such as toner, transferring the developer image visualized onto a recording medium such as paper, and heating and fixing the image with a fixing device. In order to prevent each device constituting the image forming apparatus from being adversely affected by heat emitted from, for instance, the fixing device or a low-voltage power supply unit for supplying driving electric power to each device, the image forming apparatus is provided with a plurality of cooling fans.
In the conventional image forming apparatus, the plurality of fans are driven to rotate at full speed while printing is performed, so that there is a problem in that if a user uses the image forming apparatus in a quiet environment, he/she would be annoyed by noise ascribable to wind noise of the fans.